Heading south

tomorrow for a couple of days. See Fleetwood Mac, maybe watch some cricket, definitely visit a couple of bookstores, the Art Gallery.

Saturday Night, Santa Barbara

"I'm working putting together a photo show in SB for tomorrow night (that means hanging pictures for photographers, I think they are more picky than poets and musicians, well maybe not, but still, the same) and then playing at it. Which means, which song goes B to E or which song goes from E to B, and then, shit, that G#5 chord, where does that go. oh, and the solos and changing strings..."

from an email from harry k stammer

Today the
postman brought
me soap on a
rope, the Pope
on dope, hope
on a slope, a
trope at a lope.
I couldn't cope.

"Don't bring
the ingredients
next time," I
told him. "Just
the finished
Dr Seuss book."

today's Mad Marsupial piece

Farmer Chris Rickard received extensive injuries when he was attacked while trying to rescue his blue heeler cattle dog, which was being drowned by an angry kangaroo in a dam at Arthur’s Creek, northeast of Melbourne on Monday morning.

Mr Rickard suffered deep cuts and scratches to his upper body and wounds to his face when the rogue kangaroo turned on him as he tried to pull his blue heeler cattle dog out from the clutches of the 5ft-tall eastern grey kangaroo.

Mr Rickard had been walking his dog, named Rocky, at the back of his property when they disturbed the kangaroo, which had been sleeping in grass nearby.

Mr Rickard said Rocky had chased the kangaroo into the dam when the marsupial turned, grabbed the dog with its front paws and held Rocky underwater for about 20 seconds.

Mr Rickard told the Herald Sun newspaper he then jumped in and grabbed the dog, but the kangaroo then turned on him.

Paramedic Michael Vasopressin said Mr Rickard had suffered a 20cm wound across his abdomen that was so deep “it cut through a couple of layers of flesh into the fat”, as well as a deep cut across his face and eye and a number of scratches to his chest, face and arms.

Times online

Will

Christo wrap
Jeanne-Claude
when he lays
her to rest?

Sometimes

I look at words & they don't seem right, even though I've spelt them correctly. One that has always caused me to pause is uncle. Today I spent a couple of minutes trying to work out if anything was wrong with spring.

Hate crime, a Freudian slip, or a new Law & Order spinoff?

HOMOCIDE detectives are investigating the death of a man.....
news.com.au

The barrier

between those that don't | & those that do

apatheid

The
ball was,
in yore, caught.

I'm finally

getting around to doing the print editions of the last few issues of Otoliths. Have more or less finished #13, will probably start on #14 tomorrow, &, since I'm in the zone, will try & follow up & get #15 ready.

Plus, I've got six or so books in various stages of preparation. I know I said I wasn't going to do any more, but it looks like I spoke too soon.

& issue #16 is already becoming quite substantial, even though its go-live date is still two-&-a-half months away.

The temperature today is 37° Celsius, just under 100° Fahrenheit, & there's an even hotter day forecast tomorrow. It's not even summer yet, which is a reciprocal of the many emails I'm getting from the States which mention that it's an early winter. How can people be sceptical about climate change?

& I'm off to watch a repeat episode of Buffy on cable. I'm too embarrassed to let on how many times I've watched what is one of my favorite shows.

Detail from

Le Passage de la Vierge à la Mariée


Marcel Duchamp, 1912
MoMA.

causality / casulty

A flasher on board a Hamilton bus in New Zealand has led the driver to crash into a police station.

A 14-year-old male passenger allegedly exposed himself to a female passenger on the bus on Friday morning, causing her to scream.

The bus driver called his company office, who advised him to take the bus to the nearest police station.

When the bus arrived at the Hamilton North Community Policing Centre, the driver activated the emergency door lock, thinking the bus was in neutral.

But the bus was still in gear and rolled into the station entranceway, hitting an arch, cracking the bus windscreen and causing minor damage to the building.

No one was injured and the 14-year-old boy was arrested and charged with carrying out an indecent act.

which becomes

Series Magritte #205

Discourse on Method

In there for
show, or
core co-
ordinate?
Descartes—
bald, be-
spectacled,
but not at all
bewildered
by the juxta-
position of
the box &
horse's bell
Magritte has
placed be-
fore him.

To him
two objects
in Euclidian
space; a three-
dimensional
definition
makes all
things
relative.

what I'm currently working on

+


=

The Descartes ficcione

Having
suffered
through 17
symposia
convened
by L’Académie
Francaise
on Le Discours
de la Méthode

& fearing
he was
about to be
pushed be-
yond the
bounds of
rational
thought

Descartes
discarded
his wig
& his silk
breeches
& hose
& headed
for the
nearest
leather bar
muttering

“Who gives
a fuck what
anybody
thinks. I am
what I am.”

According to The Australian Literary Review

which is as pompous & oldfashioned as its name suggests, &, like so much of the literary establishment in these parts, licks its own ass & likes the taste of what it finds there—shit that is stylistically at least threescore & ten years old—these were the ten best-selling books of poetry throughout the country in the last week.

1. Shakespeare's Sonnets
2. The Bee Hut, Dorothy Porter
3. Book of Longing, Leonard Cohen
4. Dorothea Mackellar's My Country
5. Selected Poems of T.S.Eliot
6. Penguin's Poems by Heart
7. The Odyssey
8. W.B.Yeats
9. The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran (hardback)
10. The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran (paperback)

There are walls

that are built to keep people out—the Great Wall of China, Hadrian's Wall—& there are walls built to keep people in—the West Bank Wall, the Berlin Wall.

There are walls that are built of stone, of timber, of steel, of concrete. & there are walls that are built with unthinking irony, as was that constructed by the organizers of a free U2 concert in Berlin celebrating the anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall who built a two-meter high barricade around the event to keep it from public view.

stops on the morning-thought bus route

wake to the sound & smell of rain

Ѵ

many mornings since

Ѵ

is pleasant

Ѵ

is sweet & pleasant

Ѵ

dulce et decorum est

Ѵ

huge memorial window at my old highschool

Ѵ

first world war

Ѵ

wilfred owen poem

Ѵ

The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Ѵ

never more so than now

Ѵ

& then

Ѵ

country joe & the fish

Ѵ

& it's one, two, three
what are we fighting for?

Ѵ

fort bragg

Ѵ

afghanistan

a co-post

Series Magritte #204

Quand l'heure sonnera (When the hour strikes)

Venus de
Milo, hot-
air balloon,
sky/sea/sand—
writing down
the elements
doesn't have
the tension
of a painterly
arrangement

unless you
know the sub-
text. So. Some
clues. Start
with a child-
hood incident.
Continue with
de Chirico.

Redesigning the Pompidou Centre

    Three of the five
corners of     Praxiteles'
            head are tastefully
                 filled with imitation
         plants. The fourth
                 & fifth     share a
            Liberace-style white
                      baby     grand piano.

from a Q & A with Sir Ian McKellen

Details: Is it true that when you stay at hotels you tear out the Bible page that condemns homosexuality?
Ian McKellen: I do, absolutely. I'm not proudly defacing the book, but it's a choice between removing that page and throwing away the whole Bible. And I'm not really the first: I got delivered a package of 40 of those pages—Leviticus 18:22—that had been torn out by a married couple I know. They put them on a bit of string so that I could hang it up in the bathroom.

Details: So did you?
Ian McKellen: It is in the bathroom, yes, but it's too much of a curiosity to actually put to use.

The whole interview can be found here.

Jean Vengua reading

Today the
postman brought
me de Sade's
120 Days of
Sodom. It has
a 30-day
money-back
guarantee.

de
I
fy

Otoliths 15 is now live

Ira Joel Haber
July Collage

In a switch on the normal All Hallows' Eve tradition, the someone who's come knocking at your door is bringing you candy. No tricks, just treats. Issue 15, the southern spring 2009 issue, of Otoliths has just gone live, & has in its basket a wondrous variety of text & visuals—sometimes both—from Ray Craig, Crag Hill, Andrew Topel, Jeff Harrison, James Mc Laughlin, Bob Heman, Arpine Konyalian Grenier, Tyler Flynn Dorholt, Philip Byron Oakes, Chris Gordon, Louise Norlie, Donald Dunbar & Andrew Lundwall, Raymond Farr, Márton Koppány, Halvard Johnson, Kathleen Rooney, Rodger Lowenthal, Travis Macdonald, John J. Trause, Kat Dixon, John M. Bennett, Baron & John M. Bennett, Sheila E. Murphy & John M. Bennett, Robert van Vliet, Cecelia Chapman & Jeff Crouch, Yoko Danno, Charles Clifford Brooks III, j/j hastain, Daniel f Bradley, Tim Marcuson, Michael Brandonisio, Lance Newman, Adam Katz, Andy Martrich, Jeff Klooger, Yonah Korngold, John Martone, Bill Drennan, Karri Kokko, David Berridge, Ira Joel Haber, Marcia Arrieta, Martin Edmond, Andrew Topel & John M. Bennett, Felino Soriano, Jal Nicholl, Ed Baker, Tony Rickaby, Sam Schild, Paul Siegell, Tom Beckett, Grzegorz Wróblewski, David-Baptiste Chirot, Jon Curley, sean burn, Tim Kahl, Mara Patricia Hernandez, PD Mallamo, Carlyle Baker, Bobbi Lurie, John Moore Williams, Dominic Amerena, & Spencer Selby.

So turn on the porchlight, & get reading.